How does a guy who specialized in designing ride vehicles become immersed in the creation of Audio-Animatronic human beings? In Bob Gurr’s case, his boss — Walt Disney — knew he could do it.

Walt Disney stands next to New York World's Fair promotional posters.

While working on the ride system for the Ford Magic Skyway ride at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, Gurr got his first taste of the new-fangled robots to be featured in Disney’s Fair attractions.

"I was asked to look at the GE animated figures (to be used in General Electric’s Carousel of Progress show) and so that was kind of a shock because I had only done vehicles. I had never done any animated humans or animals. I was tasked with gathering up three or four guys and figuring out, ‘Well, how would we do animated figures in a wholesale method?’

A more recent version of the Abraham Lincoln figure, star of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln at the New York World's Fair.

"We tried several different types of animation. A couple of the techniques did not work, but we came very quickly to learn how we would do it, so I started a whole system of part numbering, how we would do the engineering, drawing, working with the shops.

"Then, in October of 1963, Walt said, ‘Oh, by the way, Bobby, I want you to do the Lincoln figure.’"

Talk about having a full plate: Gurr was working full-bore on the Ford Magic Skyway ride system and was just getting his feet wet on the GE figures when creating a realistic Abraham Lincoln figure was thrown at him.

"Actually, the Lincoln was kind of easy," Gurr says now, nearly five decades later. "I had just enough experience with what we had to do with the GE figures. But the Lincoln was gonna have to do a lot more animation and do really quite a trick thing." That "trick" was standing up from a chair.

"But I got it all done in 90 days. Thinking about it — concept, making the sketches of all the parts, passing out the parts to all the drafters, then taking out the parts drawings every day over from Glendale to Burbank at the studio where we were building it.

"It turned out, in hindsight, to be a radical machine, the first time the world was ever going to see a really believable animated figure and then a president of the United States, to boot. Not only that, but a tall, skinny guy who didn’t have any body to put parts inside.

According to Bob Gurr, doing an Audio-Animatronic figure of Grover Cleveland instead of Abraham Lincoln would have been easier to work with because "there would have been a lot more room."

"If we’d done Grover Cleveland, I would have had a much easier time ... I would have had a lot more room in there," Gurr joked.

Several problems did surface with the Lincoln figure, most dealing with the amount of electrical current flowing into the Illinois pavilion. No one ever found out exactly why Lincoln would occasionally "spasm" during testing, although the lights at nearby Shea Stadium were the chief suspect.

But, according to Gurr, "it was a marvel the machine worked as well as it did from the get-go. It combined the sculpting, the skin, the detailed facial animation, animated hands, plus the body, plus getting him up out of the chair and all the electronics to do with that ... it was a big effort by so many people working on that machine.

"But within a year, we found with the basic concept of the Lincoln, we could actually engineer what we would call production parts. In other words, instead of making a part one at a time, we could make a whole group of parts by investing in the tooling to make parts.

"So the Pirates (of the Caribbean) ride at Disneyland, that one consisted of what we call standard AA figure parts — Audio-Animatronic figure parts — we could manufacture humans and animals out of all these standardized parts.

"And all of that started with the basic configuration of Abraham Lincoln."

Autopia cars. Matterhorn Mountain. The submarine voyage. Monorails. Ford Magic Skyway. Audio-Animatronics. Gurr can look back on all his life’s work — justifiably — with great pride. Few people can match his success or his accomplishments.

"We look back now and it’s kinda funny. I was hired on (at Disney) at age 23 and in a way it doesn’t seem all that long ago, because all those memories are so totally vivid, but at the same time, the guys we all worked with, we didn’t adulate one another, we were just workers. Nobody gushed over anybody else’s coming fame.

Bob Gurr

"At no time did we think we were doing anything classic or anything that was gonna last. We were just doing stuff Walt wanted us to do because it was pretty neat ideas. A lot of times, we’d look at each other and say, ‘Boy, we had a really good time. If we were independently wealthy we would have done the same thing, just done it without gettin’ paid.

"I’ve gotten several lifetime achievement awards, I’ve got a window on Main Street and I’ve got the Disney Legends award and Legends plaque at the Disney Studio and it’s kinda neat looking back and saying, ‘Wow this was a lot of fun. I didn’t realize it was gonna lead to all this because we were just doing work.’

"I still remember all that stuff even though in a couple of months I’m gonna enter my 80th year and I don’t feel close to 80."

Last of a six-part series. Our thanks to Bob Gurr for sharing his incredible experiences.